Today marks three years since I returned from my five-month deployment to Afghanistan. In some ways, it feels like those three years have been a lifetime; in others, like it was only yesterday that I stepped out of one world, and back into another that I couldn’t quite recognise. I left Afghanistan in mid-September with another junior officer and a number of the soldiers from our Shadow UAV contingent as part of the drawdown of Tarin Kot Multinational Base. The majority of my Troop, those soldiers under my direct command and my responsibility, remained behind. I also left behind my best friend, whom I had—unintentionally, and at that stage, completely…